Placing our thoughts in order and putting them into practice is the hardest challenge of all.

disBANDed – ep 1: Be Your Own Pet

by davidchrzanowski

disBANDed is a series of posts documenting some of my favourite and most influential bands that are no longer together. Taking a trip back over the last 15 years through my twenties and into my teens.

The series starts with a band that I have recently rediscovered, Be Your Own Pet. A band with a short, but memorable shelf life. Their low-fi, garage punk sound leaves anything but a musty aftertaste.

In short, the band were established in 2004 and played their last shows in 2008; the same year as their final album, Get Awkward. They realised two full length albums and five eps.

The band’s first, self-titled, album was released in 2006, and in true punk style has a running time of just over 33 minutes. The opening song, Thresher’s Flail, kicks in with a straight-to-the-point rhetoric that continues through the entire album. The songs finish as quickly as they start, with tom-fill combinations signalling go-time. But, really, this could easily be one half an hour installation of stinging guitar riffs and backstreet poetry sung by the excitable, Jemina Pearl.

You could argue into the small hours how this band would have developed if they had continued longer. However, the two full lengths are powerful enough to spark nostalgia for decades to come. If you didn’t come across these guys when they were around, then the music is still relevant with no sign of going cold. Press play, crack a beer and tear up the weekend with a soundtrack of BYOP.